Thursday, January 29, 2009

wild & crazy banjo

Steve Martin has released his first all music album. It's called The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo. Steve wrote most of the 15 tracks. It was produced by John McEuen, known for his playing in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Other pluckers or warblers of note on the album are Earl Scruggs, Mary Black, Tim O'Brien, Vince Gill, Dolly Parton, Tony Trischka and Pete Wernick.

Apparently it's exclusive to Amazon for 90 days. You can get the MP3s off Amazon for 99 cents each [only available for purchase in USA] but then you'd miss out on the 24-page colour booklet, with Steve writing about each song and his lifelong love affair with the banjo.

Amazon has kindly made the first track on the album, Daddy Played the Banjo free for download as an MP3.   

Worth a read is the lengthy but solid article and interview with Steve by Nancy Cardwell at bluegrasssnow.

Here's Steve with Tony Trischka and Bela Fleck playing The Crow on Letterman.